


little faith

by pillarofsalt



Category: The Pacific - Fandom
Genre: Anyways, Hurt/Comfort, I don't really know what this is, M/M, Post War, also, also a little bit of like canon character death description, bye, i forgot to add those, kind of, kind of not, so it's kind of au'ish, this is a fic in which snafu doesn't get off the train
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-04
Updated: 2014-12-04
Packaged: 2018-02-28 02:08:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2715050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pillarofsalt/pseuds/pillarofsalt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He's a deadly forest fire.</p>
            </blockquote>





	little faith

**Author's Note:**

> no offense is intended towards the real men. this is purely based off the actor's portrayal on the pacific.
> 
> also: tHIS IS MY FIRST EVER FIC. i wrote it at 1:30 am. this is not edited, so all mistakes are my own. ~~
> 
> also also: title shamelessly taken from (and inspired by) the national.
> 
> come say hi on tumblr @stevebuckey!!
> 
> edited 05/23/16.

**i.**

 

War is hell; it's wet and tired and there are too many dead men to count, to bury, to name, to remember. Eugene thinks about his life before the war; sleeping in on Saturdays, brunch and going to church on Sundays. He remembers homework, his dog, Edward pinching his sides at the dinner table when they were young. He remembers how he and Sid would ride their bikes to the bluffs and sit in the tall grass, talking about being heroes some day,

 

_"My father treats those combat boys. Says they're real heroes."_

_"I'm g'nna be a hero some day. I'll fight all the bad guys 'n come home and find a pretty dame 'n settle down. I'll have a real nice life."_

_"Me too."_

 

He laughs now to himself, but it's bitter, and angry and cold and fucking tired.

 

**ii.**

 

He thinks about God often, in that minuscule stretch of time where he's not killing faceless enemies or trying to sleep through the gunfire. In the beginning he would ask God how he'd ever allow this to happen, why he would let an evil such as war carry on as it has—young men fighting old men's wars—but now it's mostly to keep himself from losing that last shard of himself he's been holding onto so desperately. In these quiet moments, he asks God to forgive him ( _Hail Mary, full of Grace_ ), but that doesn't ease his gravid conscience. He learns later that a conscience like his won’t do him any good during a war, it will only drag him down when he’s needed to function the most efficiently.

 

After that, the mud and rain and moist warmth of Okinawa swallow him whole, it takes him down into the belly of the beast and reminds him of that time in tenth grade when his teacher brought in a glass tank with a big snake ( _"An Eastern Diamondback," Mr. Coulter had said with a proud smile_ ) in it, borrowed from the college science class down the road. There was a box on his desk, small and brown, and then he reached in and pulled out a brown mouse by the tail. The creature was small, wriggling as he opened the lid to the tank and dropped it in rather unceremoniously. Inside, the mouse had tried to hide from the snake, tried to run away but only scrambled into glass walls as its end watched calculatingly from the other corner of the tank. After a minute it just stopped. As if it knew that the moment it was set in the tank it was doomed. As if it knew what awaited it.

 

It took a few minutes for the snake to strike, injecting venom into the rodent with a lethal grace that intrigued and terrified him. The rodents death was slow, painful, left to die while they all watched in fascination. Eugene had thought it was one of creation's beautiful tragedies.

 

Now he realizes life's great irony. He is the mouse.

 

**iii.**

The woman in the hut is all he thinks about when he lays her lifeless body back down to the blood stained floorboards. She's all he thinks about when he steps over the corpse of her daughter when he stumbles dazedly back outside. She's all he thinks about when he falls asleep that night.

 

He thinks he cries in his sleep, curled up in the dark and rot and mud. He isn't sure he knows why he cries; his chest is hollow and his fingers are molded to the shape of his gun and he doesn't feel anything, but he cries. Snafu pretends he doesn't hear, sitting six feet away in his own muddy foxhole, and Eugene tells himself it was a dream. It's all a dream and he's going to wake up to the warm Alabama sun shining through his bedroom window with his Ma making breakfast downstairs. In the pitch-dark, he wraps his arms around his knees tighter.

 

**iv.**

 

They're screaming at each other, both hoarse and shaking with the bone deep exhaustion that only war can bring out. He's never heard Snafu break like this, but it terrifies and thrills him because he feels like something distant has awoken, something like fire, something like warmth inside his chest. It's raining still, reeking of death and shit, but inside him is a dim light.

 

Then Snafu is pulling him down, holding him, one hand on his back the other fisted by his shoulder. Grounding him.

 

Then Hamm is dead.

 

He barely blinks.

 

Later that night he has a nightmare and wakes up to find Snafu watching him like he often does, eyes wide and focused on him like a moth to a light, glowing in the dark, mouth open a little like he wants to say something but doesn't know how to form the words stuck in his throat. The rain continues to pour. He doesn't fall back asleep and Snafu doesn't look away.

 

**v.**

 

The war is over. Burgie stumbles off, a smile on his face: half hysterical, half unbelieving. Suddenly they're left to find the pieces of themselves that they lost in battle; the ravaged, blood soaked, dirty pieces of themselves that were stamped in the mud, buried under their dead and the people they've killed. He feels like a rubber band that's been stretched too thin, pulled too taught for too long, trying to fall back into its original shape. Distantly, part of him feels like screaming his throat raw. Part of him feels like crying. But most of all, safest of all, he feels absolutely nothing, and so he watches the dark night sky.

 

Then three things happen:

 

1\. Snafu kisses him.

 

2\. He kisses Snafu back.

 

3\. Eugene feels something real for the first time in a long time.

 

 

 

**iv.**

 

On the way home, the train stops in Louisiana, and Snafu doesn’t get off. He doesn’t look Eugene in the eye either, he just bites his tongue and drums a hand on his knee. The relief consumes him wholly, but he doesn't say a word.

 

The morning sun is streaking through the window by the time they finally reach Calera. It's warm, and Eugene smiles.

 

“Ready?”

 

“Jus’ go. And stop talkin’.”

 

Snafu’s tone is sharp as ever but his eyes are soft and it makes him ache. Then he’s pushed towards the door, out to where their ride is waiting. They both get a warm, if not confused welcome. Sidney doesn’t ask, but then again he doesn’t really need to: Snafu’s fingers curled around Eugene’s hip says everything they can't. Sid gives them both a tight smile and quick nod before helping Snafu stow their luggage. The car ride back starts off hushed and ends with Eugene as Sid's best man. With the car rumbling down the road, Sid laughing and Snafu smirking from where he sits in the back, everything almost feels normal.

 

 _Almost like before_ , he thinks.

 

 

 **iii**.

 

“I love you.”

 

“Fuck off.”

 

Eugene smiles and presses a kiss to his shoulder.

 

 

 

**ii.**

 

It takes them six months to get jobs, and then a year after that to find an apartment of their own. The one they settle on is in California. They find it on a road trip, and they’re both silent in agreement when Snafu hands the landlord the down payment.

 

The apartment is small, the couch that it comes with is ripping in the back and has stains they don’t ask about. Eugene’s parents give them some money because they still think Snafu is going to school to become a teacher. Snafu finds that hilarious, Eugene doesn't.

 

 

 

**i.**

 

One night Eugene comes home from work to find Snafu in the bathroom, sitting on the edge of the tub. There’s a bottle of cheap whisky (nearly empty, he frowns) sitting on the counter.

 

“What’s wrong?” He asks, setting his palm gently on Snafu's shoulder. Snafu’s got his head in his hands, a lit cigarette between two bruised fingers and there’s blood dripping slowly onto the old tile floor between his feet.

 

There’s no answer, but he looks up, grinning at Eugene with a split lip and bloodied teeth. His eyes are glistening and there’s a cut above his eyebrow.

 

“ _Fuck you_ , Eugene.”

 

Eugene swallows around the tightness in his throat and his heart. _When the bad nights come, they come hard_ , he thinks. Quietly, he says, “Come on, lets get you cleaned up.”

 

Unsurprisingly, he’s allowed. He runs a warm wet cloth over Snafu’s cut, gingerly around the skin of his eye that’s beginning to mottle a purple-blue, then softly over his mouth. He doesn't ask, and Snafu says nothing in return, but his blue eyes are on him the entire time, unreadable and deep and full of wonder. _He’s a deadly forest fire_ , Eugene finds himself thinking as he rinses the cloth again, the water in the sink turning pink before it washes down the drain. _He burns up anything that gets too close, consumes anything that comes onto his path._ In the room, he takes Snafu’s clothes off slowly, pale fingers dancing across bruised ribs, a bony shoulder, the just of a hipbone. There’s nothing sexual about it, it’s just them in a dark room holding on to each other like dying men, because they are and because that’s all they have left. The war has taken everything from them, stripped them down and disassembled them, then left them like that like exposed nerves. It took everything but this. This closeness. _Each other_. Snafu watches him take his own clothes off, eyes growing tired and heavy. They slip under the covers and pull each other close, staring until the image of one another is painted across their eyelids and it’s the last thing they see.

 

His last discernible thought before he falls asleep is this;  _he’ll burn me up too_. There will be nothing left of him, but then, there wasn't really much left to begin with (together, after the war, they barely make a whole) and so he prays it will be quick. The time will come and Snafu is finally going to outrun him. He’ll be consumed in the other’s flames, in his heat, his angry words and his sharp tongue, but on one last sleepy sigh, Eugene finds that he doesn’t really mind.

 


End file.
